Easter Chocolate Fudge Cakes

Following on from yesterday's rant about cheap mini eggs, I mentioned that I made some Easter Chocolate Fudge Cakes. In my disgust at the knock off confectionary, I ended up not allowing them on top of my cakes and instead opted for Cadbury mini eggs.

This was necessary because when cakes are this good, they deserve to be royally crowned with Cadbury mini eggs, rather than being manhandled with a jester's hat of synthetic confectionary.

This recipe came from the BBC Good Food website, a digital treasure trove for the ecstatic eater, where I can lose myself for hours in the tempting array of culinary delights on offer. What with it being Easter Sunday this weekend, there was only one type of cake I would be making for work this week and hence my oven conceived these plump chocolatey babies, smeared in a sticky chocolate fudge buttercream with a nest of brightly hued mini eggs nestled on top.

I couldn't recommend this recipe enough. It requires only 5 ingredients for the cakes and a further two are needed for the buttercream and the cupcakes can be made and baked easily within half an hour. Not that you want to hurry to make these. The warming smell of chocolatey goodness permeating my kitchen made this something I could have happily have been making for hours.

The cakes were beautifully moist, dark spongy pillows of cocoa batter, but it was the buttercream that really took them to the next level. I adapted the recipe by using Chocolate Philadelphia instead of the milk chocolate because I can't get enough of this tub of creamy delight. Fudgy and gooey without being sickly, sticky and sweet without being cloying, this was a dream frosting. I'm not ashamed to admit I scraped out and ate every last inch of the glorious goo out of my mixing bowl after all the cupcakes were iced.

Plus, the cakes look so charming with their pastel eggs huddled together on top. So this is a real winner in terms of ease, aesthetics and taste.

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

140g soft butter

140g golden caster sugar

3 medium eggs

100g self raising flour

25g cocoa sifted

For the icing:

85g milk chocolate, broken (I replaced this with some Chocolate Philadelphia).

85g soft butter

140g icing sugar

Plus 2x 35g bags of white chocolate malteasers and min foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. I, however, used mini eggs instead.

· Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5 and put 16 gold cases into a fairy-cake tin. Tip all the ingredients for the cake into a mixing bowl and beat for 2 mins with an electric hand-whisk until smooth. Divide between the cases so they are two-thirds filled, then bake for 12-15 mins until risen. Cool on a wire rack.

· For the frosting, microwave the chocolate on High for 1 min. Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the melted chocolate. Spread on the cakes and decorate with Maltesers and chocolate eggs.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3481/chocolate-fudge-easter-cakes